Matte Topcoat Review

Something different today as I got curious about matte topcoats and how they worked. While I was out I picked up 3 different types in order to see which one was the best. The first one was £1 from PRIMARK and their P.S. collection of beauty products. The bottle contains 7ml of polish, making it the cheapest of the three I bought at 14.3p per ml, great for us students! The next to were both bought from superdrug, the BARRY M matte topcoat and the COLLECTION 2000 equivalent. The BARRY M polish contains the most polish, with the bottle containing 10ml, but costing £2.99 is about 30p per ml. The COLLECTION 2000 also set me back £2.99 and contains only 8ml, making it the most expensive at 37.3p per ml.

So cost wise the PRIMARK polish is the cheapest, but the bargain price may not account for the quality of how well it works.

The next thing I like to look at with a polish is the brush size. I personally like a thick, flat brush as I find I get a nicer finish around the base of the nail, as well as giving a nice coverage with each stroke. The brushes from these polishes look like this:

Looking at the brushes like this made me think the BARRY M polish would be hard to put on as it has a skinny brush. The next skinniest was the PRIMARK brush with is thick but not flattened like the COLLECTION 2000 brush. So overall I feel I would prefer the COLLECTION 2000 brush as that is the type I like to use. But looks are not everything and the polish itself may have been terrible.

In order to test the quality of topcoat I tested them not only over polish but also as a topcoat over gels. I felt that it needed to be tested over polish as that is its primary use but wanted to try at how it looked over gel polish as one may have been better suited for another.

Here is the original shine from each set of nails:

Please excuse the slightly chipped nail

As you can see the polish had a lot more shine than the gels. 

Here are the matte topcoats and how they worked:

Each little finger has the original shine on them. One thing that struck me immediately is that the PRIMARK polish didn't really dull the shine of either nail. The next thing was how the COLLECTION 2000 polish came out really streaky, which was a shame as it was the most expensive so I felt it should have been so much better. However, I think this test has found an definite winner at that is the BARRY M polish, the polish wasn't too thick and create the best matte effect. 

So I think here it is definitely worth paying that little bit extra for a better polish!

Here is some added video to show the effect of the matte polish. 

All opinions expressed are my own.